Higher Prices = More Piracy

The Daily Times is reporting a bizare tactic launched against businesses in Pakistan. International software companies overcharge for software in Pakistan (by as much as 6x compared with neighbouring India). Rather than overpay, businesses make use of multiple copies of single software licenses.

The self-appointed police of the software world, BSA (owned and run by international software companies) fines the busineses, and then forces them to purchase their overpriced software anyhow.Imran Ayub reports the details in Local businesses, govt object to BSA’s 30-day truce offer.

CAD vendors hyprocritically bemoan the "high" levels of piracy overseas, but then turn around and charge as much as double for their software in those markets. You can't have it both ways, boys and girls.

Microsoft seems to be the only one so far to have clued in: this year, it dramatically dropped prices in areas of higher piracy.

(I compare USA and non-USA prices charged by Autodesk and Bentley Systems in an posting made earlier this year.)